The Complexities of Nonfiction
Photo by hannah grace on Unsplash
Greetings, readers of Writing With a Broken Tusk ! This isn’t a guest post or an interview or random musings from Uma. Instead it’s a conversation between Uma and Jen about writing nonfiction. If this format works, we’ll post occasional chats on subjects related to crossing borders while writing for young readers.
[Jen] In the UK, November is National Nonfiction Month, when children’s librarians build colorful displays and teachers build colorful lesson plans out of nonfiction texts and the art and craft of telling true stories. It’s National Nonfiction Month in my little South Philadelphia rowhouse, too, because, well, every month is. I love nonfiction.
[Uma] I love nonfiction too. I love reading it and I’m glad I’ve dared to try writing it. Every project is an education for me. What part of it draws you, Jen?
[Jen] I love writing about things I care about, and finding out things I don’t know about. The rabbit holes I have fallen down! O! The rabbit holes!
[Uma] Likewise. Here’s to rabbit holes. They’re amazing opportunities for me to fill in the gaps in my own learning. My problem is often that I can’t see when I’ve done enough research and need to buckle down to write.
[Jen] So, so true. Time and perspective work differently in a rabbit hole!
But, Uma, it’s a tough time to love nonfiction in children’s writing, when the business of nonfiction is to tell truths, and while the truths of the day get more complicated to tell. I don’t just mean the subject matter, although none of that is simple–the complexities of the climate crisis alone, or social injustice, or systemic oppression, or the US’s role in geopolitics, or who should or should not be biographied just for starters–
[Uma] Yes, I know. I have a biography sitting around of a man who was a kind of Johnny Appleseed in India, but he was American and white so am I trading in a white savior trope? I don’t think so, but it’s, well, complicated and honestly, I can’t see much of a market for it.
[Jen] Right? That’s it exactly! And apart from subject or market, there’s something else. Something about how we talk about those complicated truths.
The more nonfiction I write, the less satisfied I am with how I write it.
[Uma] Tell me more about that. You’re not saying enough? You’re saying too much? Which?
[Jen] Saying too much, for sure. Perhaps reading too much? I adore complexity and I love to dig into context on topics of interest. Where are the different perspectives? Where are the dissenting opinions? What is the social or scientific situation in which this topic sits? But aA major part of writing nonfiction for children, especially in the picture book form, is deciding what to include and what to leave out. I am always baffled by –how to fully explain or explore a person or place or concept (or all of the above) in 600in so few words. These days I find it difficult to be satisfied with the story that these decisions leave me with–the truth that stays on the page.
One project I am working on now is supposed to be a light, browsable animal fact books, but I have thousands of words on the flaws of taxonomical systems, and the entrenched white-male bias in contemporary scientific research, and our dangerous propensity to write historical figures as heroes, and, oh yeah, did you know that some species of armadillos always give birth to quadruplets? O! The rabbit holes!
[Uma] Quadruplets? Really? That is surely for another conversation. Seriously, that’s a problem I have too. My editor for Threads of Peace nailed it when she asked, What’s the story you want to tell? She made me understand that I don't have to be the expert in the subject I'm writing about. I have to be the storyteller. Doesn’t that help, to turn the spotlight on story? She also told me to see if I could write a thesis for the book. A single sentence–you know how to do that. Try it. It really helped me see what my narrative was about, so I didn't feel like I had to put in everything and the kitchen sink.
[Jen] Oh, gosh. That does help! Bless editorial wisdom. There is a kind of freedom in this thinking–permission, almost, to see myself as simply a part of a bigger story or idea or person’s life. I am contributing to the discourse, rather than, say, teaching a comprehensive graduate level program on the thing. Less telling truths than offering information and perspective. And it’s often far more interesting for a reader when the story is an invitation to make their own inferences and decisions, no? If I approach the subject matter with openness that the story must by definition be a partial-truth or piece of truth, or a slant on truth, that reflects as much on me as a writer as it does the subject as a person or thing, then it is my contribution that I am sharing, not my authority that I am asserting. “What kind of story do I want to tell?”
[Uma] Well, I thought I was writing a 22-poem natural history of Mount Everest and it turned out to be a single poem in two voices that became a picture book dual biography.
[Jen] Yes! You revised without mercy! Wonderful! These words that you shared with me are a lesson that I have to re-learn over and over. But I want to add something to it: “Research without resolve?” or “Dig deep without overthinking?” or “Hey, Jen, you don’t have to follow every single thread of context in a panic to know it all. At some point, you’ve got to remember about step two.” What might you add, Uma?
[Uma] I’d say research with the resolve to learn but know that the research is not the end of your work, just the beginning. The real work is finding and telling a story.
